Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said on social media that his office’s sexual assault kit initiative funded forensic genetic genealogy testing that “narrowed the list of suspects.”
so…
Did you eve read the article?
I don’t get that—they got eleven matches in their database, which presumably only covers a fraction of the whole population. So there are potentially tens or hundreds of people out there who could match, most of which they don’t even know. And the article doesn’t really say how they narrowed down the list to him in particular, especially since he’s not even from the same state.
It wasn’t a direct match. It partially matched to 11 people so they did follow-up investigative work on the 11 matches looking for anyone in their families that stood out as a likely suspect due to things like work proximity, lifestyle, criminal record, familiarity with the victim and so on.
Easy. You have 11. Eliminate the women because they would know it’s male based on DNA. Now we’re at 6. 4 were verifiably in different states at the time of the crime. 2 left. Stake them out for a bit and gather some garbage likely to have DNA. 1 sample is a perfect match.
Alternatively, those last 2 sample could both not match and then they just continue their investigation.
But my point is, those original eleven weren’t an exhaustive list of the possibilities, just the ones that happened to be in their database—so narrowing it down to one means nothing.
Thanks. Not only that but did I sound outraged? People should know to check with all their direct blood relatives and get their approval before submitting potential evidence to 23AndMe or similar to avoid potential family friction/crises. That’s all.
